When she saw the glint of the revolver barrel through the broken glass in the window, Hadley Knox thought, I'm going to die for sixteen bucks an hour. Sixteen bucks an hour, medical, and dental. She dove behind her squad car as the thing went off, a monstrous thunderclap that rolled on and on across green-gold fields of hay. The bullet smacked into the maple tree she had parked under with a meaty thud, showering her in wet, raw splinters.

She could smell the stink of her own fear, a mixture of sweat trapped beneath her uniform and the bitter edge of cordite floating across the farmhouse yard.

The man shooting at her turned away from the porch-shaded window and yelled something to someone screaming inside. Hadley wrenched the cruiser door open, banging the edge into the tree. She grabbed for the mic. "Dispatch! Harlene? This bastard's shooting at me!" Some part of her knew that wasn't the right way to report an officer under fire, but she didn't care. If she lived to walk away from this, she was turning in her badge and her gun and going to work at the Dairy Queen.

The radio crackled. "Hadley? Is your eighty still the Christie place?"

She could barely hear the dispatcher over the shouting and swearing from the farmhouse. She thought she made out two masculine voices. "Yes," she yelled, getting a squeal of feedback from the mic. She tried again, forcing herself to speak in something like a normal tone. "He's got a.357 Magnum." She had recognized the sidearm. Hot damn. "There may be more than one of them. Men, I mean. Not guns. Although there may be more guns." She could hear herself, close to hysteria. "For God's sake, send help!"